Courtney Pine was born in London on March 18, 1964, to Jamaican immigrant parents, a carpenter father and a mother who worked in housing management. He grew up in Kensal Green in north-west London, moved to Wembley, and studied classical clarinet at Kingsbury High School while teaching himself the saxophone from the age of 14. His first professional work was in reggae: in 1981 he toured with the duo Clint Eastwood and General Saint, and as a teenager he also led a hard-bop group, Dwarf Steps. He has said that Sonny Rollins's calypso-flavored playing was what first made jazz make sense to him, and with John Coltrane as the other model he joined drummer John Stevens's jazz workshops, played part-time in the Charlie Watts Orchestra, and toured with the composer George Russell and with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

In 1985 he founded the Jazz Warriors, a big band of young Black British players that grew out of the Abibi All-Stars, a community band that played in the foyer of London's Royal Festival Hall during the summer of the International Youth Year, under the umbrella of the Abibi Jazz Arts organization. Members who went on to solo careers included Steve Williamson, Cleveland Watkiss, Orphy Robinson, and Gary Crosby. The band's one album of its first run, Out of Many, One People (Antilles, 1987), documents that movement. Pine's own debut, Journey to the Urge Within (Antilles New Directions, 1986), brought the same circle into the record shops: it featured pianist Julian Joseph, vibraphonist Orphy Robinson, bassist Gary Crosby, drummer Mark Mondesir, and singer Cleveland Watkiss, mixed originals with pieces by Horace Silver, Wayne Shorter, and John Coltrane, and included the vocal single "Children of the Ghetto" with Susaye Greene. The album reached number 39 on the UK Albums Chart and earned a silver disc, a rare result for a British jazz record.

Pine stayed with Antilles through the early 1990s. Destiny's Song + The Image of Pursuance (1988) reached number 54 on the UK chart and was produced by Delfeayo Marsalis, the brother of Wynton Marsalis and Branford Marsalis; Delfeayo also produced The Vision's Tale (1989), on which Ellis Marsalis Jr. played piano with drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Within the Realms of Our Dreams (1991), with pianist Kenny Kirkland, bassist Charnett Moffett, and Watts. Alongside the jazz albums he made records that went elsewhere. He featured on Mica Paris's "Like Dreamers Do," a number 26 UK hit in 1988; he appeared as himself in a jazz quartet in a 1988 Doctor Who serial; and Closer to Home (1990) was a reggae-based album made with Jamaican musicians and the producer Gussie Clarke, from which "I'm Still Waiting," with singer Carroll Thompson, reached number 66. To the Eyes of Creation (4th & Broadway, 1992) brought African, Caribbean, and Indian music into the mix.

His mid-1990s records for the Antilles and Verve labels turned in opposite directions. Modern Day Jazz Stories (1995) was recorded with American players, including Geri Allen, guitarist Mark Whitfield, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, bassist Charnett Moffett, drummer Ronnie Burrage, and Cassandra Wilson as a guest voice; it was nominated for the 1996 Mercury Music Prize and helped win him a Music of Black Origin award for best jazz act. Underground (1997) put a band of Cyrus Chestnut, bassist Reginald Veal, drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, and trumpeter Nicholas Payton alongside the turntablist DJ Pogo and the singer Jhelisa, with hip-hop beats under the saxophone. Another Story (Talkin' Loud, 1998) gave tracks from those two albums to drum and bass producers including Roni Size and Attica Blues for remixing. Back in the Day (2000) was a homage to the soul-jazz and Afro-funk records of Gary Bartz, Fela Kuti, Manu Dibango, Eddie Harris, Idris Muhammad, and Bernard Purdie, played by an all-British band with guests. Pine was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2000.

In the 2000s he built a career as an independent bandleader, broadcaster, and educator. He scored the BBC documentary Nelson Mandela: The Living Legend (2003), released Devotion (2003 in Britain, on Telarc in the United States in 2004) and the large-band Resistance (2005), was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Westminster in 2004, and presented the BBC Radio 2 series Jazz Crusade. In October 2007 he assembled a fifteen-piece "Afropeans" band at the Barbican, commissioned by the Arts Council of England for the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, and released it as the Jazz Warriors album Afropeans. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours for services to jazz, and received a second honorary doctorate, from the University of Southampton, in 2010.

His later records turned to the bass clarinet and to the Caribbean. Transition in Tradition (2009) is a tribute to Sidney Bechet; Europa (2011), made almost entirely on bass clarinet with pianist Zoe Rahman, bassist Alec Dankworth, and drummer Mark Mondesir, has Shabaka Hutchings guesting on clarinet on one track; and House of Legends (2012) turned to ska, mento, merengue, and calypso with Pine on soprano saxophone alone. In 2014 he put together an all-female Venus Warriors band for the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal. Song (The Ballad Book) (2015) and Spirituality (2022, with a string quartet added) are duo albums with Rahman, and Black Notes from the Deep (Freestyle, 2017) featured the singer Omar and a version of Herbie Hancock's "Butterfly." He appears on the 2024 album Africanism by the Last Poets with Tony Allen, and the Jazz Warriors reunited in 2020. A two-disc retrospective of his 1980s and 1990s recordings, Out of the Ghetto: A Modern-Day Jazz Story, was issued by Universal in April 2026.

Pine is first of all a tenor and soprano saxophonist in the post-bop line of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, and he has been billed as a jazz musician throughout his career, but he has deliberately worked across the borders of the idiom: reggae at the start, then African, Caribbean, and Indian rhythms, hip-hop turntablism, drum and bass remixes, funk, and soul. Some jazz listeners hoped that Modern Day Jazz Stories would settle him as a new Coltrane, and he followed it with Underground; he has said that he does not accept a limit on what jazz can include. His later bass clarinet records with Zoe Rahman show a quieter, chamber-scale side. Beyond the records he has been an institution builder, notably through the Jazz Warriors, which gave a generation of Black British musicians a stage and a first national profile, and a teacher and broadcaster who has run workshops across Britain.